Frans mentioned LINQ To SQL Templates that are available as a separate download for LLBLGen Pro customers. Given that I use LINQ To SQL for certain projects I thought I would try out the templates.
The attraction to using something like the LLBLGen Pro Designer instead of the Visual Studio 2008 LINQ To SQL Designer with LINQ To SQL is that the LLBLGen Pro Designer will pick up changes to the database and update the model accordingly. For very few tables this is not a big deal, but as the number of tables grows and you have DBA's making changes to the database schema it is very easy to get your model out-of-sync with the database. With LLBLGen Pro you can just refresh the catalog and it will pick up those changes for you. With the LINQ To SQL Visual Designer in Visual Studio 2008 I don't know of a real easy way to find those changes and update your model. I use code generation templates that I built for my Database Explorer and Code Generator to just regenerate the enities.
Using LINQ To SQL with LLBLGen Pro is as simple as choosing the LINQ To SQL Template:
The output generated by LLBGen Pro for a few tables in Northwind gives you the familiar DataContext Class and a separate file for each entity. I added the console application for some quick tests:
Pretty straightforward for those of you familiar with LINQ To SQL.
If you use stored procedures quite a bit with LINQ To SQL, these templates are probably not for you because you can't specify stored procedures for your CRUD and you cannot add stored procedures to the DataContext Class as methods using the LLBLGen Pro Designer. There are ways around this by maintaining a separate partial DataContext Class for manually adding stored procedures, but that may be more work than it is worth depending on the number of stored procedures.
The real benefit here is that if you have quite a few classes mapped to tables and they routinely get out-of-sync when changes occur to the database schema, the LLBLGen Pro Designer already has a mechanism for detecting changes and updating the model appropriately. You don't get this from the LINQ To SQL Visual Designer in Visual Studio 2008 so this could be a real benefit on large projects where you need to use LINQ To SQL.
Hope this helps,
David Hayden
Tags: O/R Mappers, Code Generation